Select Documentaries of BERT HAANSTRA

October 22, 2016

Select Documentaries of BERT HAANSTRA

Presented by Ananya Drishya in association with Venkatappa Art Gallery

Introductory talk by Giridhar Khasnis.

About the director BERT HAANSTRABert Haanstra was born on May 31, 1916 in Holten, Overijssel, Netherlands. He became a professional documentary film maker in 1947. The films he made between 1948 and 1988 belong to various genres. He won international acclaim with his short documentary Spiegel van Holland / Mirror of Holland, for which he received the Grand Prix at the Cannes festival of 1951. In 1958 his documentary Glass, a filming improvisation made in a glass factory, won the Academy Award for Best Documentary Short Subject.

Besides documentaries, Haanstra also directed several fiction films. His first feature film, Fanfare, a comedy situated in a small Dutch village, was a huge box-office hit and is still high on the list of Netherlands’ most popular films ever. Haanstra was a self-made man, and built up a fascinating film career through his own efforts. Although his work was firmly rooted in Dutch culture, it carried a deeper universal meaning and offered a critical view of human society. His films did not contain explicit political statements, yet Haanstra was known to be anything but a ‘neutral observer’. The lyrical and pictorial qualities of his work came to be admired by critics as well as general viewing public. Haanstra died on October 23, 1997 in Hilversum, Noord-Holland, Netherlands.